“The Texas gerrymander freakout: What’s happening in the Lone Star State is not a threat to democracy.” — The Washington Post Editorial Board, 8/20/25
“For months, Democrats crafted the illusion that their plan to redistrict Virginia was about restoring fairness. In a special election on Tuesday, most voters assented to that deception as a referendum to rewrite the state constitution narrowly passed.” — The Washington Post Editorial Board, 4/22/26
At a certain point, a mature political movement must ask the hard questions. Questions like: If voters keep rejecting our agenda, are voters the problem? If courts keep ruling against us, is the Constitution too woke? If counting every single little ballot produces undesirable outcomes, might counting fewer of them produce desirable ones?
For decades, America has been trapped in an outdated framework called “democracy,” wherein candidates campaign for votes, the ballots are counted, and whoever gets more wins. This system may have made sense in an earlier era, when horse travel was common, information moved by telegram, and certain folks were measured in fractions. But in today’s fast-paced world, can we really afford to let simple arithmetic determine power?
Increasingly, leading thinkers are suggesting a smarter path: If states insist on electing the wrong people, Congress can simply refuse to seat them. Not forever, necessarily. At the very least, until those states learn to behave.
Take any blue state, purely as a random example. Under the old model, voters choose senators and representatives through elections. Under the innovative model, Congress could review a blue state’s choices and ask a more sophisticated question: “Do we like this result?” If the answer is no, that state could temporarily enjoy a new civic role as a scenic colony or territory with absolutely no voice in national affairs whatsoever.
Some critics call this “disenfranchisement.” That is inflammatory language. A more accurate descriptor would be something like “conditional representation based on mood and whether I’m getting my way at the time.”
And why stop there?
If a state uses mail ballots, same-day registration, automatic registration, early voting, or any other process that involves citizen participation, Congress could launch endless investigations until morale and the vote tally improve. Why, if enough suspicion is generated, results could be invalidated and rerun repeatedly until the electorate produces a more responsible answer. Think of it as best two out of seven.
Naturally, there would need to be standards. We cannot have chaos. Therefore, any election won by our side would be presumed legitimate, reflecting the clear will of the people. Any election lost by our side would trigger immediate concerns about dead voters, live voters, moved voters, duplicate voters, ghosts, suspicious vibes, and unexplained lines at specific polling locations we’d describe using quotation marks, like “urban.”
Constitutional romantics will object that Congress cannot simply nullify representation based on partisan displeasure. But these people are trapped in a narrow reading of the law that prioritizes text, history, structure, precedent, and meaning over the far more dynamic principle of wanting something very, very badly.
Besides, precedent exists. Legislatures have long exercised the power to investigate elections, which obviously implies the power to ignore them, reverse them, replace them, and hold them hostage until further notice or, dare I dream, in perpetuity. That’s just basic civics.
Eventually, we could modernize the process. Why burden millions of citizens with voting when a small panel of aggrieved committee chairmen could simply determine outcomes in advance? Or how about a single man—let’s say a white, affluent one; again, purely as a random example—chooses who serves, lives, or dies at that particular man’s pleasure? My goodness, imagine the efficiency. No long lines. No campaign ads. No need to pretend Wisconsin matters every four years.
We could call the whole thing “representative government” because a handful of representatives, or just that one white, affluent man, would dictate how we should govern.
And if the public dislikes any of this, they are free to express themselves in the next election, should there be one, pending review, maybe.